In February 2019, MTN's Uganda unit faced unprecedented pressure from the government of Uganda. This pressure took the form of numerous MTN Uganda executives being abruptly deported from the country on the grounds that they posed a threat to Uganda's national security. However, in reality, these unilateral actions by Uganda's government was most likely driven by the Office of the President which has accused MTN Uganda of repatriating profits outside of Uganda without the state's permission. Another source of agitation from the government's side is MTN Uganda's constant delay in setting out a timeline of when the telco would list on Uganda's local bourse.

A plethora of product demonstrations and announcements were made at OFC 2019 in San Diego. The announcements centered on 400GbE for datacom transceivers for data center switches, service provider routers, and client-side interfaces for optical transport equipment, as well as 400G ZR for DCI and ZR+ metro-regional applications. Significant progress was demonstrated in terms of performance, size, and power dissipation, enabling solutions utilizing popular form factors including OSFP and QSFP-DD. Vendors have begun commercial release of 400GbE datacom products, and several vendors are planning to start customer sampling of 400G ZR transceivers in 4Q19. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

This year’s MWC Barcelona event was an important gathering place for the mobile industry, playing host to an interesting dialogue about the future of mobile connectivity. Of course, 5G was the focus of MWC, but a few other topics managed to be part of the overall mobile discussion—WiFi in particular managed to shine through the deluge of 5G announcements. Service providers like AT&T, manufacturer Samsung, network vendors Cisco and Nokia, and Internet giants Facebook and Google all made notable WiFi announcements highlighting not only their own WiFi activity but continuity of the larger WiFi ecosystem. This research note provides a summary of some of the announcements and discussions we had related to WiFi and how it relates to network and service evolution in the 5G era. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

Once more unto the breach—that being Barcelona—for the annual trading of knowledge, ideas, contacts, and contracts that is Mobile World Congress. Other than missing last year, this was my 15th overall, stretching back to 1998 in Cannes (when MWC was the GSM World Congress). A lot about the event has changed in that time, and the industry is once again undergoing profound changes, this time driven by the onset of the 5G era and all that it promises (though whether it will deliver is a debate for another time). One particular area undergoing much evolution is my primary area of market coverage: mobile backhaul.
In this research note, I summarize some of the conversations I had with equipment vendors about their latest product announcements related to this market and consider what they mean for the future of mobile backhaul and related areas. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

With the world gearing up for a massive increase in IoT devices and the building of 5G networks, what we heard at Mobile World Congress this year is that OSS/BSS vendors are welcoming the new requirements with 5G-ready cloud platforms that facilitate service providers’ network virtualization process. Every service provider we’ve spoken with is involved in a network function virtualization project, and a few of them, including AT&T and Telefónica, are ahead of the process with large digital transformation initiatives. In fact, Telefónica organized a full session that dove into its ambitious transformation into a liquid software-defined automated network, where each network node is under consideration with a chief goal in mind: the move to 5G and future network architectures that revolve around convergence, simplification, disaggregation, virtualization, cloudification, automation, and infinite capacity. We can tell the vendors got the message, which can be summed up in five themes: cloud, 5G readiness, open source, collaboration and partnership, and digital BSS.

At MWC Barcelona in late February, in addition to the highly covered 5G standard, the NB-IoT and the Cellular Vehicle-to-Vehicle (C-V2X) standards also demonstrated significant progress in the cellular IoT space.
This article includes news summary at MWC and IHS Markit analysis that are related to the NB-IoT and the C-V2X technologies.

There are a wide variety of initiatives, policies and mandates around the world designed to promote energy efficiency. However, energy efficiency strategies and investments vary depending on the industry, but the goal of reducing energy use and costs remains the same.

After a first cut at 6G, let’s come back to the highlight of the show. As usual, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri kicked off the event with his traditional keynote Sunday afternoon. Of course, he didn’t miss the chance to remind the audience that his company was the only one available in all geographies across the world. As we all know, Huawei is banned in the US market—although they have a small presence in rural America—but this statement prompted us to wonder where Ericsson wasn’t present. Anyway, everyone sees 2019 shaping up as a big year for 5G, so here is a summary of the world’s three largest RAN vendors’ war of 5G claims. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

Despite the buzz around foldable smartphones and 5G, the world’s brightest minds from academia, mostly from Finland’s University of Oulu; leading mobile network equipment vendors including Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Bell Labs, Samsung, and ZTE; and service providers including China Telecom, Orange, and NTT DOCOMO gathered to brainstorm about what’s beyond 5G.

Mobile World Congress 2019 was anticipated to showcase brand new 5G smartphone designs and the conference did not disappoint. Even before the show officially started, there were 6 smartphone designs with 5G modems already announced:

There was no doubt as to the “best in show” at the 2019 edition of Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain last week. The award was given to the most significant product introduced during the week of the MWC conference. The host organizer, GSMA, bestowed the honors to Huawei for their Mate X foldable 5G smartphone; an out-folding smartphone that unfurls into a contiguous eight-inch tablet.

On 1 March, Siemens acquired German PV inverter supplier Kaco New Energy as it seeks to build out its PV inverter portfolio to include three-phase string inverters. This acquisition is further evidence of Siemens expanding its capabilities in the area of decentralised energy, renewables, storage and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure prior to its launch of its Smart Infrastructure Operating Company on 1 April 2019.

HMD/Nokia’s announcement at MWC ‘19 clearly defines the strategic focus of the company for the coming year, which is the expansion of their presence in the emerging markets, building on its existing brand image and cooperation with Google.

MWC and OFC provide a great opportunity for companies to make new product and technology announcements, and on 20 February 2019, Ciena announced plans for its next-generation coherent optical chipset named WaveLogic 5. WaveLogic 5 will be made available in two variants, covering applications from single span unamplified links through long-haul and subsea networks. The WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) is optimized for performance and flexibility, operating between 200G and 800G per wavelength, while the WaveLogic 5 Nano (WL5n) is optimized for footprint and power dissipation, operating between 100G and 400G per wavelength. Ciena is developing separate DSPs for each platform in parallel using 7 nm silicon for both. It is also employing vertically integrated high speed electro-optic component technology for footprint optimized coherent optics.

On 19 February 2019, Infinera revealed the next steps in the evolution of its coherent optical engine technology and provided insight on how its portfolio, including products from its recent acquisition of Coriant, will evolve moving forward. The company also shared its vision for the evolution of access, edge, and core networks.

Each year IHS Markit surveys service providers, in order to find out which companies they view as the leaders of the optical equipment market. The survey also explores their perceptions of vendors in key decision metrics, like pricing, total cost of ownership, technology innovation, research-and-development (R&D) investment, and product reliability.

As wireless industry start 2019, we will now see a new batch of competitive 5G solutions offered by the likes of Intel, Mediatek, Samsung LSI and HiSilicon poise to challenge the leading position of Qualcomm.